


you can reverberate, you can decay

by arealsword



Series: and then there was a war in heaven [1]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe – Apocalypse, Angst, Clark’s Third Law, Gen, Hints Of Eldritch Nonsense, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memetic Entities, Memory Issues, Refuge In Ambiguity, Time War, they’re fine though, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28454508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arealsword/pseuds/arealsword
Summary: Memory’s a tricky thing, these days. Revolution is even trickier.Virgil heads north, with a little help from his friends.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: and then there was a war in heaven [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084172
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16
Collections: TSS Fanworks Collective





	you can reverberate, you can decay

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Mouse and the Model by the Dresden Dolls.
> 
> Thanks to LostyK for a quick last minute read-over and spelling/grammar check!!

The date is: uncertain, as it always is.

The location is: also uncertain – but if pressed, Virgil would put his non-existent money at ‘America, tentatively’.

Midnight last night, someone on a bootleg radio station somewhere between cities mentioned the possibility of an angel being locked up in Spring City. They were shushed and talked over, and it wasn’t brought up again, but that doesn’t matter. Virgil heard them anyway. Virgil can always hear them, whether he wants to or not.

With the state of the world being what it is, it really is a tossup as to whether the rumour created the reality, or reality created the rumour – but as long as reality is what it is and rumours are spiralling around that reality like fruit flies or time flies, what does it matter? The end result’s always going to be the same. That’s the view that Roman’s got on it, anyway; or it was the last time Virgil checked.

He can’t say he agrees, but it’s pointless to argue. There’s more important things to worry about.

*

Spring City had been burning even before Virgil had arrived, so he can’t claim responsibility for that. What he  _ can  _ claim responsibility for can be listed off rather succinctly, as follows: the minor but devastating explosions in the west and far east quarters, a considerable amount of poorly-thought-out anarchist graffiti scrawled hastily across three-and-a-half cubicle office buildings, and the equally messy and badly-planned liberation of Spring City’s only captured angel from government prison. Well,  _ angel  _ isn’t the right term, but apparently everybody here on the ground needs to have names for everything, and if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck and has the radiant reality-shattering abilities of a duck and so on –

Look, Virgil never claimed to be  _ good  _ at radical terrorism. He hadn’t even wanted to get involved in it in the first place, actually. It’d definitely never been on his planned list of careers, back when... well, suffice it to say that he thinks he pretty much figured he’d be dead by eighteen, even before all this started. Never mind how old he was, when it did get started; ages and dates and times are difficult these days.

Still, crouched in the relative shelter of a sign that blares advertisements like military drill orders, knee-to-knee with Patton who’s smiling a soft eyes-crinkling-up smile, he can sort of remember what he’s doing this for.

“I’ll get these off,” he promises, fiddling with the welded cracks and screws of the manacles he’d clipped off with a pair of rusty bolt-cutters almost a full hour ago. There’s no room to get the cutters in the gap between the metal and Patton’s skin. He’s going to have to come up with something different.

“No rush,” Patton says. “I’m just glad you’re here. That you’re helping.”

“There actually  _ is  _ a pretty big rush,” Virgil mutters, but he’s glad he’s here too; glad he was able to make it in time. Or whatever passes for  _ time  _ nowadays.

Right now, Virgil kinda wishes that Patton had wings to go with the rest of the whole ‘angel’ thing. Fluffy white wings, probably; they’re the sort of wings that Patton deserves, or maybe brightly-colored ones, like a parrot’s. Then he’d be able to fly like a bird, and wrap them around the two of them, and it would be ridiculously soft and warm, like sinking into a cloud.

No wings here, though. Just messy greasy hair (how long had he  _ been  _ in there), a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that he technically doesn’t need but has been wearing for as long as Virgil’s known him, and a worn, heavy grey overcoat that just about manages to cover the gentle vibrance of his glowing skin and the way that his body isn’t  _ quite  _ humanoid, not in the ways that technically and semantically matter.

“Roman got caught by a stray bullet,” Patton recounts, wincing as Virgil tugs and fiddles and curses at the metal that’s still looped tightly around his wrists and lower back. “Remus – I think he would’ve been fine, but you know how they are, they don’t like to leave each other alone. He yelled something that, uh, I... won’t repeat here, because this is  _ polite  _ company –”

Virgil laughs, despite everything.

“ – and jumped in front of the very next one.”

“Dumbass,” Virgil mutters to himself, mood souring. He wishes a penknife or something had survived the last shift, because currently all he has in his pockets are lint and a few dollars in a currency that he doesn’t even  _ recognize _ , even though it looks like it’s American. All the opinions on how to pick handcuff locks blurring through his head wildly contradict each other, and the bits that sound realistic he’s not sure if he could follow along with. Prying manacles open with your bare hands is always harder than it looks. He looks up at Patton. “They’re both dead?”

Patton nods, the light haloing his skin streaking and blurring with the motion. He looks pained, and it might not just be because of the chains. “Or as good as. I warned them about taking shots together, but, hey.” He tries for a lighthearted little smile. Tries being the operative word.

“Shit.” Virgil bunches his fists and bites his lip and fights back the instinctive panic that comes with the news. It’s not as bad as it sounds, after all. “Is it – I – I should go back. For them. The Memorial, they’re all... they’re still at Summer City, right?”

“If nothing’s changed, they should be, but... kiddo, aren’t you heading north?” Patton’s eyes flicker, wide and translucent, in the beat between one second and the next. “That’s a bit out of your way. And if whatever you’re doing is time-sensitive...”

Everything’s always time-sensitive, nowadays. Virgil growls, and channels his frustration into tearing open the loop around Patton’s left wrist with an almighty  _ wrench.  _ “It  _ is.  _ I had time to get you out, though.” He throws the now-useless scrap of metal off to one side and lets Patton shake out his hands with a happy little exhale of relief. It makes Virgil smile, but not for long. “It’s just – if I don’t show up, then nobody’s going to remember them right and they’re going to be all  _ wrong  _ again, and... god, Pat, I can’t stand it. How can they  _ exist  _ like that? Perfect little soldiers, stereotyping themselves down to cardboard cutouts so they keep on dying for – ”

“I know,” Patton whispers. “I know, I know, I don’t like it either, I  _ don’t _ , but it’s what they want. We can’t just drag them away from it, they’d hate us. And it would be wrong to stop them from helping.”

“It’s what they want because that’s what everybody _remembers_ them as wanting,” Virgil bites out. “And do we actually have any proof that the Memorial are actually helping with anything? Because from what I can tell, they’re just going around playing action spies all the time. Blowing each others’ heads off by accident, getting each other killed. Over and over and over and _over._ ”

“Haven’t you heard anything? Through your, you know...” Patton taps the side of his head, head tilted to one side, mouth curved in a gentle frown.

Virgil chokes back a frustrated growl, and shakes his head. “They keep their media pretty tightly locked down. Something about not wanting external input? I don’t know.  _ God  _ I hate those guys – ”

“I’ll be back in Summer City in time for the next remembering,” Patton promises, and wraps a hand around Virgil’s wrist, squeezing gently. “And there’s plenty of other people back there who know the twins. Next time you see them, it’ll be just like they never died at all.”

“I hope you’re right,” Virgil says.

Patton squeezes his wrist again with a little sad quirk of his mouth that isn’t quite a smile. Maybe it’s meant to be reassuring, but it falls short. His hand drops away slowly.

“Got your bible, or whatever it is,” Virgil adds abruptly, searching around in his satchel. “Snagged it on the way out, I –  _ think  _ I remember you needing it?”

Patton inhales, soft and excited, and reaches out to take it. It’s a strange little thing, unmarked and bound in leather. Crisp stiff pages like it just came off a bookstore shelf but the words inside faded so you can only just read them, and the words themselves make next to no sense. Virgil had tried to skim through it earlier, just to see what all the fuss was about, but he’d ended up dizzy and confused and angry at himself for not processing it properly. Maybe it just wasn’t meant for him to see.

“I – uh, I don’t  _ need  _ it, y’know,” Patton says, fingers closing over the cover. “But it’s really,  _ really  _ good to have it back, thank you.” He tucks it into his jacket, just over his heart, rocks back and forth in apparent contentment, and then says, “D’you need any help out of the city?”

Virgil opens his mouth to deny help, but then shuts it and considers. “...A boost would be nice.”

“Then I’ll see what I can do before I go, huh?” Patton says, and opens his arms, as wide as he can manage in the relatively enclosed space they’re crammed into. “Love you this much.”

Virgil huff-laughs and obligingly shuffles forwards to wrap himself around the soft, too-small warmth of the last good thing left in this city. The old grey overcoat smells of dust and long-dried blood and, most importantly, the faint and almost imperceptible sweetness of a world that doesn’t exist anymore. “Only a metre, huh?”

Patton tucks his head into the crook of Virgil’s shoulder, folds his arms criss-cross across his back and glows gently at him. “Aw, c’mon. You know I’d reach out to the ends of the Earth if I could.”

“That’s not so far away, these days,” Virgil says, but holds onto him as tightly as he can for as long as he can manage, anyway.

*

Patton cuts the radios and televisions and broadcasts at eight-on-the-dot, as promised. Every single transmission in Spring City clicks and whirs and fades out, Virgil feels the loss like every internal organ in his body shutting off one-by-one. But as quickly as it left, it all begins to come flooding back – you can’t keep media down for long, no matter how powerful you are. And it’s not the silence Virgil was looking for – it’s the kick that comes afterwards.

Virgil breathes in the dead air, and falls into it as it surges outwards with all the intensity of a bushfire. And then he’s riding the snatches of crackling nonsense static north, north, northwards.

It’s the only way worth travelling these days – only way worth travelling,  _ period,  _ he’ll never understand how the others just... can’t. Can’t ride the wild curves of the media as it ebbs and flows, never will know how it feels to have it all running through the back of your brain, endless, forever. It sets his teeth on edge and head on fire.

But then again, he’s never known anything else.

*

Fall City is dead. Of course it is. It’s never been occupied, and the empty cars and vehicles that line the streets have always been there and have never been used. The same goes for the buildings, the restaurants, the parks and the water fountains and the subway lines. They had once been in pristine working order, and they would still be if not for entropy wearing them down. Everything here is new and perfect, rusting and crumbling away to nothing in a miasma of pointless lack-of-use.

Even the towering bulletin boards blinking out suggestions that Virgil trim his timelines, rewrite his past, and rearrange his futures seem oddly lacklustre. They vibrate over his consciousness like untuned guitar strings; present but not as insistent as he’s used to.

He follows three separate threads of rumours on two long-forgotten discussion boards, cross-references those mentally with an ongoing social media feud that’s just ridiculous enough to have some truth woven into it, and finds Logan tucked between Kantian philosophy and sixteenth-century alternative timeline architecture on the third floor of an abandoned library. All the books are on the wrong shelves, and he couldn’t begin to guess why but he’s pretty sure he can blame it on shift shenanigans. Most things can be traced back to shifts, these days.

He drags the dictionary out, kneels down and props it open on the ground. Licks a finger, starts flipping through until he gets to page 344 – LIKE to LONGEVITY. And underneath the definition for  _ Logan [/ˈloʊɡən/] (noun, proper) – _

_ Virgil _ , comes the greeting, visibly relieved, although Virgil isn’t sure how he knows that, seeing as it’s all written in slightly faded black-and-white, with no spoken emphasis to be heard.  _ Forgive me... how long has it been? _

He imagines Logan adjusting his glasses. He doesn’t know what Logan  _ would  _ look like, if he resided in this plane of existence, but he can’t shake the distinct feeling that he’d be wearing glasses if he could.

“Few months, or years,” Virgil says. “Maybe a decade? – uh, it’s getting kind of hard to tell around here, sorry.”

_ Yes, understandable. How many shifts, then? _

Now this he does know. “Twenty-six. More, recently.”

_ They’re getting closer and closer together? _

“Yep.” Virgil pops the  _ p  _ unhappily. “So for all I know, we’ve had this conversation twenty-five times in a row already but neither of us know it.”

_ A disconcerting thought, certainly. But not the sort of thing we have the power to change. _

Virgil breathes out, and the disappointment and helplessness that’s settled deep into his bones by now seems to sink in even further. Cradling Logan’s open book in his hands, he sinks down to sit-cross-legged at the base of one of the bookshelves. “I mean, we don’t know that. Not for sure.”

His gaze flicks idly over the last iteration of Logan’s communication as he waits for the words to change. It seems to take a second longer than it should, but eventually:  _ I see. _

“Yeah,” says Virgil. When it comes to Logan, he’s gotten good at reading between the lines (so to speak). “I know you think it’s stupid – ”

_ Not stupid _ , interrupts the text, forming into relevant meaning around where his index finger is absently resting.  _ You’ve never been stupid. I don’t think your plan is stupid. This is just unprecedented territory and... I am concerned. For you. _

“Thanks,” says Virgil. “I’m also concerned for me. It’s an exhausting occupation; welcome to the club.”

_ I take it this isn’t just a social call? _

Virgil winces at the book apologetically, even though the nuances of facial expressions tend to get lost in translation. “I’m looking for Janus.”

_ Janus? _ The text seems to shift restlessly for a moment or two, before it settles on:  _ I was under the impression that you two were not on good terms, to say the least. _

“I don’t have to like the guy to get information from him,” Virgil says, and looks away from the pages for a moment. “Unless you know how to get to the Periphery?”

This time, it’s a slightly ragged and torn poster for an early-learners reading program that reads,  _ I do not. That knowledge is, unfortunately, slightly too metaconceptual for my kind to retain. _

“Which is why I’m looking for Janus, right.” Virgil shuts the dictionary, since Logan doesn’t seem to be residing in it for the moment. “As far as metaconceptual entities go...”

_ Hm. Well, from what I know – not that it’s much, Janus tends to be a subjective sort of being – all you should have to do is call him, and he’ll answer. _

Virgil frowns. “What, like – he’s always listening? I know it’s kind of hypocritical for me to say this, considering – uh, everything – but, that’s _creepy._ ”

_ Not precisely. It would be more correct to say that he doesn’t have all that much to do currently, and any sufficiently loud signal should catch his attention. More so than usual. _

“A ritual-?”

_ Most likely. He’s very attentive about rituals. _

“Considering who he’s attached to the hip with – yeah, I bet he is.” Virgil sighs, and scrubs a hand over his face. “Okay. I’ll tune in and figure out what sort of thing should bring him running, and – yep. Right. That should work. Thanks, Lo.”

_ Of course,  _ says the poster text.

“As long as he knows  _ how  _ to get past the Periphery...” Virgil mutters to himself, mapping the shape of the plan aloud. “...I mean, I already know I need to head north, so I guess I can build the plan around that, even before I meet him...”

He’s so caught up in his head that it takes a moment for him to realize that Logan’s jumped back over to the dictionary. Specifically, the front cover. The list of authors and contributors now reads,  _ Take me with you. _

Virgil scowls instantly. “No. Nope. Definitely not. Logan, you know – ”

_ I may not be able to tell you where the Periphery is, but I have near-unlimited knowledge of just about every other thing besides. I refuse to be humble about that. _

“Logan,” says Virgil, with considerable self-restraint. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but  _ books are very flammable. _ ”

_ I have absorbed  _ Fahrenheit 451 _ into my consciousness. I am aware. Make your point. _

“Where I’m going, there’s not going to be much other written text for you to jump into. Probably _none_ , actually – if whatever I’m carrying gets burnt or shredded or whatever, you’re toast.”

_ I have never before been communicated via gluten-based substances,  _ Logan notes.  _ Is my transference to a slice of bread an especially likely scenario? _

“Probably not, because  _ that  _ was a metaphor.”

_ Ah. Of course.  _ There’s a moment where Logan doesn’t make his presence apparent at all, and then – in careful letters spelt out along the dictionary’s spine –  _ How opposed are you to getting a short word or phrase tattooed somewhere on your person? _

Virgil stiffens. “ _ No. _ ”

_ It doesn’t have to be anything especially significant. A single word, with sufficient metaphysical weight – _

Virgil stops reading and throws the dictionary at the opposite shelf. Gently. He just kind of tosses it so it ends up lying on the floor, undamaged. “I am _not_ getting a tattoo just so I can carry you around on my body like the world’s most sentient tramp stamp, Logan. Even if I could find someone who, a), knows how to do tattoo work, and b), is _willing_ to do it –”

The scratchy penknife graffiti declaring that ‘ML + L WERE HERE’ rearranges itself somewhat painfully to ask,  _ Why not? It seems a reasonable enough solution. _

“If I die out there, or get trapped, or – or,  _ whatever,  _ we don’t know enough about the damn place to know what it’s going to do to me – then you’ll be trapped with me. On my body. Forever. Nobody wants to be stuck with my body forever, Logan;  _ I  _ don’t want to be stuck with my body  _ now. _ And – and I don’t want to do that to you.”

_ You wouldn’t need to feel guilty _ , comes the gentle reassurance.  _ I’m offering this. _

“Yeah, and I’m declining.”

Some days Virgil wonders how he came to know these people. These wonderful,  _ wonderful  _ beings that he calls his friends, that smile at him with the warmth of a forgotten fractured timeline and break city infrastructures just to help him fly – that offer to follow him into what just about amounts to  _ literal hell  _ because they want to watch his back. He genuinely does not know, and that’s not just hyperbole or exaggeration – they’ve been through so many shifts at this point that their histories and origins have all but been swallowed up. Him, Logan, Patton, Roman, Remus, Thomas – even Janus, to an extent – beings consistently caught in medias res. No start to their stories, no real end. They just  _ are. _

It’s strange. There’s so many stories and thoughts and opinions filtering through his head near-constantly, and not a one of them tells him what he _actually_ wants to know. The truth doesn’t make for good media, apparently. Color him wildly surprised.

He couldn’t explain, if asked, why Logan is here in this library, in this city. He’s not even sure if  _ Logan  _ knows.

“Please,” he says, after a moment or two of Logan not saying – or rather, communicating – anything at all. “I know I can’t stop you if you  _ really  _ want to come, but... fuck, Logan, this is basically one suicide note away from a death sentence.”

_ If you know you’re going to die,  _ says Logan,  _ then why are you bothering attempting it at all? You’ve frequently expressed your exasperation with the notion of being a ‘hero’. _

“This isn’t heroic behavior,” Virgil mutters, biting his lip.

_ Roman would beg heartily to differ. _

“Roman doesn’t know what’s real anymore.”

_ True enough. You haven’t answered the question. _

Virgil puffs up his cheeks, and then blows out a massive sigh. “I... I don’t know  _ if  _ I know. And, uh, it’s not just a usual ‘shifts are fucking with my memories and motivations’ thing, so jot that down,” he adds, “at least, I don’t think it is.” The carpet is clean but dusty under his fingertips. He rubs at it, considering. “I think it’s more like, everything’s pointless right now? Like, literally everything and anything we do could be erased at any point, and we’d have no idea.”

_ One might consider a lack of consequences rather freeing. _

“Uh, maybe? I’m mostly terrified, though. But.” A shrug. “If I’m gonna die, I kind of want to die as me, you know? And if I can somehow do something to, I don’t know, stop the shifts or change things permanently or whatever... might as well, yeah?”

_ I’d consider that very heroic behaviour, Virgil. _

“You’ve been talking to Roman too much,” says Virgil, even though he doesn’t actually know if that’s true or not. “Anyway. Yeah. That’s... that’s kind of where I’m at. I guess you can come if you  _ want,  _ with that in mind, but...”

_ No. I’ll respect your wishes,  _ says Logan, although Virgil gets the impression he isn’t all that happy about it.

Virgil lets out a sigh of relief he wasn’t even aware he’d been holding. “Okay. Good. I mean – okay. Thanks for the offer, though,” he adds, and pats the dictionary’s cover, because although he really wants to hug Logan properly, he has a feeling that hugging a hardback book would be both awkward and mildly uncomfortable. “Really. It’s – yeah. I appreciate it, man.”

_ Be safe, _ says Logan.

“I’ll do my best,” Virgil says. “D’you want me to send one of the others to pick you up...?”

_ If you could. For once, I do believe I’d rather be closer to the action where this War is concerned. Just in case something shifts irretrievably. _

“I get that. I’ll let Janus know when I meet up with him. Hopefully he can pass the message on to – someone. Who knows who he’s in contact with these days, right?”

_ Who indeed,  _ comes the somewhat cryptic reply, and that’s that.

Virgil waits for Logan to curl himself up alongside the words and phrases and syntax of the dictionary pages, and then closes it as gently as he can. He carefully tucks him back between  _ Eleven Missing Days: The Fall Of The Standard Gregorian Timeline _ and  _ Kantian Philosophy of Space (Third Edition),  _ and leaves him there in the quiet, crumbling safety of a library that will never serve its intended purpose ever again.

*

He doesn’t  _ think _ anything shifts between him leaving the library and making his way up the nearest stairwell. Everything seems normal; his memory seems wholly intact. He’s pretty sure he’s always had two arms and two legs and slightly ragged hair that insistently falls over his eyes just when he least wants it to. He  _ feels  _ like everything’s just the same as it was minutes or hours or days ago, cosmically speaking.

But really, there’s no way to be  _ completely  _ sure. And that terrifies him like nothing else ever could.

*

Virgil chooses a rooftop, listens to the hum of information as it flits, mothlike, through his consciousness. Rituals are back in style, apparently. Good, it’s easier when they are. He finds a match, lights a match, holds it out to the sky and lets it burn against the ever-unchanging Fall City skyline. And waits.

It only takes a minute. Somewhere behind him, a door that wasn’t there only moments ago opens, and shuts, and is gone, and there is someone there who Virgil doesn’t bother to look at because there’s only one person it can be.

Although he’s not a person, not really. Janus is more like a memory at this point, layers upon layers of timelines’ worth of identities and faces plastered over each other. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t have an identity of his own; just that it’s  _ extremely  _ unclear if he was like this to begin with or not.

There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

Virgil lets the match held between his fingers burn down to nothing but a crooked splinter of blackened wood and a few wisps of glinting silvery smoke that curl off into the dark sky like trailing question marks, and asks, “How’s Thomas?”

“The same,” Janus replies, and when Virgil chances a glance over to his left, Janus has a hand curled bone-crunchingly tight around the handle of his cane. He’s listing to one side more than he usually does. It looks painful.

There’s an aching sadness on the fractured remains of his features that Virgil can  _ feel,  _ even from metres away.

The subject change comes swift and inevitable, before Virgil can spend too much time getting caught on the details; how kind of him. “And I really must be getting back to him as soon as I possibly can, so we’ll need to make this quick. You’re heading for the Periphery?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan. If it even exists anymore, I mean.” Virgil reaches into the pocket of his hoodie, fumbles through a crumpled matchbook until he finds one that hasn’t been burnt down to the quick and shoved into the tiny little cardboard match to be useless for the rest of its pointless existence. He listens to the media, hears someone make a wild, impossible claim, and seizes onto that thought. One breath and it lights, and he cradles it between his hands, waiting for its heat to scorch at his skin. Not a summons, not this time, just a reminder that he’s still here. Hopefully someone’s out there to listen to that reminder. “If there’s something beyond this...”

“Death, most likely,” Janus says. 

The flame blackens his palms. He doesn’t mind, he’s used to it. Fire, in all its forms, is one of the more popular rumours in this shift, and it’s pretty versatile as far as Ways To Accomplish Impossible Things go. “Jeez, you’re cheerful today.”

“I’m  _ realistic _ today. If there were a way out in that direction, not a soul would be hanging around in these parts any more. But as you can see...”

“You know, I think I actually preferred it when you were lying wildly to me.”

“Everything’s going to be perfectly fine,” Janus replies almost instantly. “Your plan is flawless and watertight, and we’ll all be back home together by tomorrow, just in time for movie night.”

Virgil eyes the horizon, and valiantly quashes a sudden wave of an emotion he doesn’t want to describe that wells up in his chest.

“I miss movie night,” he says. Realizes that he’s shown what’s dangerously close to a full emotion in front of Janus, of all people. Bites it back, tugs the feeling back down his throat where it rests there like a permanent lump. Business to attend to. There’s a reason he’d sent a call out. “I need a map, J.”

“Make it yourself,” comes the instant, somewhat careless reply.

Virgil’s hand tightens and the match goes out. “Janus – ”

“Don’t get angry at me. Not over  _ that. _ I’m serious.”  _ Tap-tap-tap _ and there’s Janus drifting somewhere just behind him, hands coiled tightly around his cane as he angles it against the ground and leans heavily on it. “I can provide the paper and I can provide the pencil, but the details are going to vary depending on which route you’re taking.”

“Oh.” Virgil doesn’t light another match, because he’s running out and he needs to save the last of them, just in case. Instead, he tugs his knees up right to his chin. “Uh, when you say you’ve got paper and a pencil...”

“A metaphorical sheet of paper and an equally metaphorical writing implement to go with it, yes.” Janus’s smile prickles at his back like it’s a physical sensation. “Although I’m sure I can find an  _ actual  _ one of both, if you really think you need it.”

“I’ll manage. So.” A curl of a humorless smile, directed at nobody in particular. “Show me the way, then.”

“The first place you need to look,” says Janus, and his cane stops tapping and his presence comes to rest right at Virgil’s shoulder, “is the root file, so to speak.”

“Which means?”

“You’re plugged into just about every source of media in existence, correct?”

Virgil twists the burnt-out matchsticks over and around his fingers. “Yeah, but not all at once. Can you imagine? – I think I’d lose it _._ ”

“You haven’t lost it already?”

“Of course I have, I’m talking to you and asking you how to get to the Periphery,” Virgil says dryly. “Your point?”

“My point is that you must be at least  _ tangentially  _ aware of where it all leads back to.”

This makes Virgil blink, thrown off for a moment. “What – the media?”

“Mm.”

“But... wait, are you saying that there’s one origin point that they all stem from? Is _that_ what you’re saying? And that’s the Periphery?”

“I don’t know,” says Janus, infuriatingly cryptic. “You tell me.”

The chatter in his head is still deafening and makes his fingers curl reflexively if he thinks about it too hard, but now that he’s paying attention he thinks he can feel the direction they’re coming from. Every feed and forum and angry comment section, they have  _ different  _ sources, but those sources all have one common source. Sort of.

“This,” says Virgil, “is making my head hurt.”

“So stop thinking about it so literally.”

“Easy for you to say, you paper-mâché timeline wreck of a man,” Virgil mutters, but closes his eyes and tries, anyway. After a moment of consideration, he catches the  _ feeling  _ of the source with entirely too much effort, and, with great difficulty imagines a trail, a dotted line in the direction that it’s leading to. He drives the holes into the fabric of the living wave of information that rolls in and out of his head, jabbing them as hard as he dares so the imprints will last. Point A to Point B. It couldn’t be simpler. It couldn’t be more difficult.

He opens his eyes. The cityscape stretches out before him, and if he tilts his head just-so, he can see the map stretching out into the far distance. Due north. Of course. It makes his skin buzz and his teeth ache, because he knows exactly where it’s going to take him.

“There you go,” says Janus, sounding entirely too pleased with himself.

“I’m going to have a headache for the rest of this shift,” Virgil mutters, and then, “oh – oh, yeah, before I forget – J, could you do me a favor?”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Do  _ Logan  _ a favor, then, because this is more about him than me. You know that library in Fall City, the one that you stole all those trashy romance novels from because nobody’s around to care?”

Janus clears his throat, ever so delicately. “I do still maintain that it’s not theft if the owners never existed in the first place – yes, of course. What about it?”

“Logan’s there; he wants out. You’re the last person I’m talking to before I hit the Periphery – help him out, please?”

“You could have brought him with you,” Janus says, his cane going  _ tap-tap-tap. _ “And handed him over to me before leaving. Wouldn’t that have been more convenient for everyone involved?”

“Well,” says Virgil, “see, I wasn’t actually sure if you’d show up. Leaving him on a rooftop in the middle of nowhere would probably be worse than leaving him in an abandoned library, so.”

He expects a snappy, dry response. But instead, he only gets a thoughtful silence, and then, “I see. I suppose that does make sense.”

“Are you going to get him, then?”

“When I get the chance,” says Janus, which is as close to a promise as Virgil’s going to get. He hears a door open and shut behind him and turns to see that Janus is gone, without so much as a goodbye. Rude, but all right, fine; Virgil can take it. He’s used to that. He’s been ruder. And, more importantly, he’s got the map now. He knows exactly where he’s going, and he doesn’t need to talk to anyone else to get there.

And, relatively speaking? It’s not even that far of a trip.

Virgil drops the used matchsticks onto the roof. It’s the first case of littering that this city has ever had. Strangely, the thought actually makes him smile. It’s not as if he’s inconveniencing anyone – there’s nobody _to_ inconvenience – but really, you’ve got to take your fun where you can get it.

He feels for the pulse and flow of the closest radio waves, tests his weight against a particularly sturdy broadcast, and tumbles off the rooftop into a swell of chatter that rises and sparks like a dying sun.

*

And at the edge of everything, Virgil can barely hear any chatter at all.

His head’s strangely quiet, for the first time that he can remember, and he can’t tell if it unsettles him or soothes him. There’s no well of questionable knowledge to fall back onto at any time, sure; but at the same time, it’s almost like the constant thrum of anxiety under his skin has dulled and faded away to nothing. He hadn’t even realized that the chatter and the unhappy twisting of his veins were even  _ connected. _

Is he still himself without the chatter, though? It really is hard to tell.

The Periphery glimmers at him like a barely-forgotten memory that he can’t quite place his finger on.

He takes a deep breath, and then takes a step and a leap and a wish –

– then everything becomes metaphor, and Virgil is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on Tumblr at sometimes-love-is-enough, where I will not explain anything about this story or the series it may or may not become a part of, ever.


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